More damn sketching

This guy over here? He was walking past the Starbucks right next to Yuka while I was sitting there sketching yesterday, while waiting for the other folks to show up for feiran’s short-notice stuff-yourself-full-o-shushi fest. We had fifteen people, clearly a larger group than the restaurant was used to dealing with, and wound up around a series of tables strung together leaving us with two groups of all-you-can-eat people placing separate orders, and the waitresses bring one group’s stuff to the other end of the table, and vice-versa, somehow leading to everyone eating more than they’d intended. But anyway, doesn’t that guy have a great face? One that cries out to be sketched?

Afterward a bunch of us headed off to bigscary’s place to watch his Farscape DVDs. Bigscary has hit upon a novel way of avoiding having to organize and store his DVD collection, by having me borrow most of it. The first four Farscape disks have joined the pile.


Oh, note to self: Y’know how you keep putting off clearing off your drawing table during the day, in favor of going out and doing daytime stuff, figuring you can do it in the evening, and then when evening rolls ’round, putting it off to the next day? Well, you’ve been doing this since Friday, and the table ain’t getting any cleared-off-er. Just sayin’.

Today’s waste of time was sitting in Ground, reading more of Mason & Dixon (which continues to be way drolly humorous) and doing still more sketching while putting off actually starting a web comic or a submission for SPX. (Also, see above about drawing table.) On the up side, I am getting the hang of that Japanese brush-pen, and I almost like how Melorne’s jacket came out in the sketch below.

( Big, color Melorne sketch )

Spending too much on comics

I pulled a medium-level stupid today, spending about $30 on a pair of graphic novels when I could’ve waited for Monday’s Memorial Day sale and saved 30%.

I got into Manhattan in the afternoon, and figured I was gonna spend some time waiting around at Starbucks so I might as well do my comics shopping early and have something else to read. I got Promethea #30, which is clearly building towards a climax, but I care less than I used to. Moore’s been climaxing for the past several issues, spread out over most of the past year. Just cum already, wouldja? My arms are getting tired.

I also got the TPB of The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. Haven’t read it yet.

I returned at 5 PM to meet the usual gang (womzilla, kent_allard_jr, drcpunk, bugsybanana), and found that Joss Whedon was the writer for Astonishing X-Men #1. What really caught my eye was John Cassady’s art. The first few pages show Kitty Pryde returning to the X-Mansion, thinking back over old times. We see her memories as scenes from earlier issues, inserted into the present-day background. Each scene is drawn in the style of the original artist, and Cassady captures Paul Smith perfectly, and John Byrne almost as well. (The other scene was after my time.)

And I saw a copy of The Bloody Streets of Paris (Jacques Tardi and Leo Malet) and felt like I had to have it. Something about the art just called to me. More after I’ve read it.

Other comics news, via Thought Balloons: Collections of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol are soon to be released! Volume 1 in September, 2 in December.